Head mounted camera tracks with your eyes

The EyeSeeCam is a rig that attaches to your noggin and points a camera wherever your gaze falls. There’s actually four cameras involved here, one to track each eye via a reflecting piece of acrylic, one as your third eye, and finally the tracking camera above that. There are some legitimate medical uses for this type of technology, but we enjoyed seeing some of the videos that [Johannes Vockeroth] put together showing everyday activities. We’ve embedded several clips after the break including an example of reading a book while wearing the apparatus. The third eye camera provides the wide shot with close-ups of the wearer’s visual focus.

@ginge: Actually, you need two. For example, if you tracked one of a person’s eyes moving in towards the nose, you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were looking at something to the side, or if they were focusing on something really close to them. You need to know where the other eye is in order to know that.

Well, this is really pretty cool. The applications for augmented reality are mindblowing. I would much rater wear a pair of glasses than put an electric contact in my eye. The software just needs to be a little faster or people are going to start getting motion sick and have seizures with all the jerky video.

Nicely done, especially the tracking seems very precise. This can be easily adapted to control a computer’s cursor on screen: just detect the screen corners in the 3rd eye camera and project the focus point onto it.
Should also work with a WiiMote and just a single webcam on one eye.
I tried this once, but 320×240 resolution wasn’t nearly enough. (Also I didn’t use the mirrors and had to look at the eyes at extreme angles to not obstruct the view. Barely precise enough to select something on a 3×3-Grid).

What I’d like to see: instead of USB webcams use android phone(s). More freedom. (If you aren’t too embarrased to explain it, you could even leave the house. And prove that you totally look at peoples faces)

@ Tachikoma
So moving to look at something off-center moves it to the center, so you move your eyes to the center and the screen moves again. Even more frustrating than that trick with the icon that jumps around when you try to click it. :-)

@Pascal
This looks like something quadriplegics could use. Just look at the computer screen, and then blink a pattern for clicks.

Eye tracking has been around for some time. I remember a video about 10 yrs ago, where marketers were using eye tracking to see where people were looking at on a TV commercial. but the head had to be held still in a chin rest. This next generation seems much more versatile.

@brsnow:
“The software just needs to be a little faster or people are going to start getting motion sick and have seizures with all the jerky video.”

I am not so sure about that, I think I would have to have it on to test it. Have you ever tried to smoothly pan your eyes from as far right as you can look to as far left as you can look (of course without turning your head)? Your eye moves in jerky, non-smooth, motions. Almost stepping across your field of vision.

You may be right, but I think it is probably closer to how your eye moves than you might think.

The thing I would like, however, is the ability to turn on and off the maginification, or zoom at will. Also, maybe expand the field of view a little. That may all be part of the videos above, I am caching them before I finish the bottom two.

Hmmmmm…. If you could make one of these on the cheap, as I suspect you could, it would have some very real potential paired up with one of those hacked EEG games like the Mindflex or whatever.

Also, on the idea of playing FPS with it, I believe it would be rather easy. As long as you keep your eyes on the target, it should work just fine. Granted, it would take some time to get used to, but I think it would work quite well in the end.

I’ve looked into eye-tracking as an input device. IMO, it is frustrating to use for an able-bodied person used to a keyboard and mouse. It’d probably be useless for an FPS. Just think about how you view things normally on a computer screen, you use your peripheral vision a lot and an eye tracker would not be able to determine that. Keeping your eyes focused on your target would probably be detrimental to your play, it’d effectively be tunnel vision. Also, your pupil doesn’t sit still, it jitters, so that would make accuracy really sub-par when compared to a good mouse.